:: Red Byrd

John Potter
Richard Wistreich

Biography

Red Byrd believes that the point of singing the music of the past is to illuminate the present. Its constant members are John Potter and Richard Wistreich, who are joined by other singers and instrumentalists with a strong grounding in early music to explore song old and new.

Its first concert, in the Musikfest Bremen in 1989, ranged from Monteverdi to Frank Martin and John Paul Jones, and in 1990-91 it toured Britain with both early and contemporary programmes. Since then it has visited the USA, Canada, Ireland, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy and Finland.

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"The listener is left marvelling at the ingenuity and imagination that produced such an intriguing wealth of rhythmic, harmonic and textural effects from the interplay of just two voices. Red Byrd's performances convincingly recreate this distant sound-world, as well as conveying the excitement with which musicians must have explored the thrilling possibilities opened up by the idea of having two notes sounding simultaneously." Elizabeth Roche, Daily Telegraph

"The music is stark and plainly cast, and these very experienced early-music singers effectively capture its direct, unadorned style, delivered with their typically warm, accurately pitched, carefully inflected, prodigiously engaging voices." David Vernier, Classics Today

Magister Leoninus: Sacred Music from 12th century Paris Helios CDH55328

DIAPASON D'OR
DIAPASON D'OR DE L'ANNÉE
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE BEST OF THE YEAR.

'Sung with beguiling beauty. These readings renew our sense of wonder at western music's most fundamental innovation - the sound of two voices simultaneously singing different lines that not only fit with, but also enhance, each other' (The Sunday Times)

'A fine contribution to the repertoire on disc of twelfth-century polyphony. A composite sound of great beauty' (Gramophone)

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'John Potter and Richard Wistreich wring the utmost tenderness and beauty from these pieces - especially in the verse of 'Sedit angelus' where the word 'crucifixum' is made to evoke a mysterious medieval religious agony. And the odd, searing harmonies in 'Iudea et Iherusalem' take us into a long-lost, almost psychological world of musical expression.' Anthony Pryor, BBC Music Magazine March 2002